Readers’ Choice Photo Contest: Winners

On her last day in Joshua Tree, Sharon Harper (Nashville, TN) says, "I heard a coyote very close, and then saw it circling." She used a wide aperture to create a shallow depth of field.

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Patricia Urban (Hastings-on-the-Hudson, NY) was hiking up Gorham Mountain when she noticed this horse fly buzzing alongside her. Use a macro lens and experiment with multiple angles to get suprises, like the placement of this shadow.

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When this bear woke up and started approaching, Jake Davis (Louisville, KY) hoped it would step on the log, showing off its whole body, paws, and claws. "In wildlife photography, animals rarely do what you want," he says, "but this time was special."

"Bison are tough to shoot because they absorb light, which usually makes them a brown dot," says Suzann Lankford (Everett, WA) who captured the deatil and texture of this bison's fur from her car in one of Yellowstone's famous traffic jams.

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The keys to Paul Phillips' (King, NC) successful fox photo: Having his camera ready and framing the shot so the fox appears to slip stealthily into the scene from a hiding spot, just like it must have stalked the mouse.

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Jesse MacNevin (Toronto, Canada) hiked up to a herd of ibex in the Dolomites. He got this shot when an animal took a break between eating and head butting. "You can tell this one is old by his scruffy fur and battle-worn horns."

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"At the end of the day, just after I dragged the canoe onto the sand and picked up my camera, one of the loons appeared directly in front of me-with a fish!" says Stephanie McDowell (Fairfield, CT). Tip: Keep the power on and the lens cap off.

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Colorado photographer Joseph Kiesel photographed this mountain goat on the saddle between Grays and Torreys (14,000+ ft peaks) at sunrise. "My wife and I had just summited Grays and were on our was to Torreys."

Need colorful proof that the BACKPACKER readers explore the wildest corners of the outdoors? Just look at these face-to-fur images of the animals that you encountered out there.